31 Days - An Open Letter to Local Leaders of Faith Communities

I thought you might like to know that you and your flock are being officially invited to join in the greatest initiative that world religions have ever taken on.

Agence France-Presse reported earlier this week that the leaders from nine of the world's major faith groups met at Windsor Castle in the UK on Tuesday, November 3 to discuss how religion can get behind the fight against climate change. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon launched the event under the banner "Faith Communities for a Living Planet."

This ecumenical meeting was co-staged by the United Nations and Prince Philip's Alliance of Religions and Conservation (ARC). Representatives from Baha’ism, Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Shintoism, Sikhism, and Taoism were to present programs that "could motivate the largest civil society movement the world has ever seen," said U.N. Assistant Secretary General Olav Kjorven. "Eighty-five percent of humanity follow a religion, a figure that shows the power of faith to move billions," he pointed out.

Speaking of numbers, according to ARC, faith-based groups "own nearly 8 percent of habitable land on Earth, operate dozens of media groups and more than half the world’s schools, and control 7 percent of financial investments worth trillions." That's a lot of clout!

"We expect to send a strong signal from religion to governments that we are extremely committed. It’s about religions mobilizing their followers to act against climate change," Kjorven said in the interview.
Peter Newell is a professor at the University of East Anglia in England who has tracked climate activism for over 10 years. He believes that religion "the traction" to create a truly global movement. "It would be a huge mobilizing force if people started to frame the issue of climate change in religious terms," he has noted.
What we really need is a combined faith voice calling for a global emergency response and calling on climate scientists and the world's scientific organizations to join in out of a sense of morality - or at least a moral duty.

105 Days - 2Years4LifeonEarth Solutions

Here are more solutions to the problem of climate change apathy or ignorance that we came up with during our Sunday brunch (see yesterday's post). You'll notice a distinct "Sunday" feel to some of these suggestions.

"What can I do, now that I'm aware of climate change?" is a common lament.

• Well, what do people do after they've had a spiritual conversion? They change their behaviour (start going to church), learn (read the Bible), and raise their awareness (take Bible study classes). They accept being told how to act (for example, the Ten Commandments). Can we create something like this - only for global rather than personal salvation?


• Talk it up. Ask people to talk about climate change with their friends, family, colleagues, neighbours, strangers, fellow club members. Talk is action when it's spreading the word.


• Pray. (Why not, eh? It's not exactly an action verb, but it's got more force behind it than hoping.)


• Start imagining a world without fossil fuels. We must have a revolution to renewable energy. (Otherwise, back to the caves and thatched huts with us!) (That's a joke, by the way. A perpetual energy economy, if we make the transition in time, will be a wonderful transformation.) 


• Realize (is realizing an action????) that we're creating a mass extinction of life. This despite the fact that we depend upon biodiversity. We are pushing thousands upon thousands of species of plants and animals to extinctions - and it looks like our species is going to be among them. START THINKING LIKE A SPECIES! START FIGHTING FOR SURVIVAL!


• Think like an ancestor. We've been so lucky as a generation - between world wars, lots of economic prosperity (at least in developed countries). It's time to burst the bubble and understand that we're killing the future and committing progenycide.


• Insist on massive public spending to kickstart this revolution to a renewable energy economy. If we willingly go into debt for war, why not go into debt for life? That would be a debt that future generations will be grateful to pay off.


• Protect carbon sinks! (First, learn about carbon sinks and why they're vital.)


• Protect the remaining rainforests and coral reefs. Insist on them being protected, damn it!


• Get emotional! Get angry! How can we talk about pissing away the future of our species and the beauty of life's diversity without getting emotional???


• Insist that environmental and social health costs be internalized in our economics. Enough of externalizing environmental and social health costs so that WE have to pay for them with our health and our lives and the future of our children and grandchildren. Let the corporations or their shareholders or their consumers pay for them.


• Understand that our goal must be 100% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible - if we're to save the future. We can't wait til the last minute.


• The only hope is action. If you love your children/grandchildren, you will become part of the solution.